What value is Peter Munya bringing to NASA?
There are so many things that didn’t go as expected in the last Presidential Election. One thing that went way off is the Meru vote. According to Opinion Polls and Raila’s performance in public rallies organized in Meru and Tharaka Nithi counties, realistic expectations was that Raila would get a minimum of 15% of Meru votes, mostly from supporters of Peter Munya. But after the vote count, Raila managed to get only 10.3% of the Meru vote.
The unexpected performance Raila had in Meru, Kiambu, Bomet, Nairobi, Kajiado, Nakuru, Nyamira, Narok, Kisii, Tana River, Transnzoia and Bungoma led to Raila losing the 2017 Presidential Election, a loss that he petitioned at the Supreme Court and won. Three days after the Supreme Court gave its verdict, Peter Munya who got 42.95% of the Meru vote decided to join NASA, and now the question is, will Peter Munya add any value to NASA?
This question is important because on the surface it appears bigwigs such as Isaac Ruto, Musalia Mudavadi and Moses Wetangula did not add much value to NASA, despite being co-principals in the coalition. Isaac Ruto’s case is more interesting as, in 2013 Raila managed to get 5% of Bomet votes but despite coopting Isaac Ruto as one of the NASA Principals, Bomet managed to give Raila some 12.3% of the vote against a minimum expectation of 30%. Isaac Ruto himself ended up losing his gubernatorial seat with 32.8% of the vote.
On the part of Musalia Mudavadi joining hands with Moses Wetangula to try to have Western Kenya vote as block for Raila Odinga, we have a scenario where Bungoma and Transnzoia voting for Jubilee even more than tthey did in 2013. In 2013, Bungoma voted for Jubilee at the rate of 12%, whereas Transnzoia voted for Jubilee at the rate of 37%. In 2017 Bungoma ended up voting for Jubilee at the rate of 30% and Transnzoia voted for Jubilee at the rate of 44.6%. It is being said that Lusaka and Wamwala factors outweighed Wetangula and Mudavadi factors in Western Kenya.
Jubilee also had positive gains in Tana River, Narok, Wajir, Samburu, Marsabit, Isiolo, Garissa, Lamu, Kwale, Kisii, Nyamira and a number of other counties where Jubilee had co opted their leaderships. This then implies that NASA had no gains from the leaderships it had co-opted, yet Jubilee gained immensely from all leaders it had co-opted. This type of political performance is rather weird, just like the straight line relationship between Uhuru and Raila votes that obeyed the formula y = 1.2045x + 183546 that Amollo Otiende demonstrated in the Supreme Court.
Given that the results which largely favored Jubilee and the leaders Jubilee had co-opted was nullified, I am justified to state that we cannot use the first part of 2017 Presidential Elections to authoritatively comment on whether or not people like Isaac Ruto and Musalia Mudavadi brought no meaningful value to NASA. That is, if the elections were conducted on a free and fair process, both Jubilee and NASA could have had some significant gains from the leaders they had co-opted from various parts of the country.
Assuming therefore that the fresh election will be conducted in a free and fair process, we can expect a significant gain from Peter Munya. According to data shared by NASA Coalition as the legit results from the nullified 2017 Presidential Election, Raila managed to get 16.1% of the Meru vote, although the IEBC Portal reported that Raila got only 10.3% of the vote. If the NASA tally is to be believed, which is close to the 15% that was realistically expected, then we can confidently state that Peter Munya’s decision to join NASA in full force means he can increase the allegedly Raila’s true votes in Meru from 16.1% to somewhere above 20%. After all even the nullified results had Isaac Ruto increase Raila’s votes in Bomet from 5% to almost 13%.
As I wrote elsewhere, Raila getting anything near 20% of Meru vote means a clear round 1 win for Raila Odinga.
